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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23219632">It Rained Today</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393'>telm_393</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hopeful Ending, Hugs, Introspection, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Child Death, Rain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:01:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,346</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23219632</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s pouring, and Bill’s all over the place, but at least Mike’s with him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bill Denbrough &amp; Georgie Denbrough, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>67</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>It Rained Today</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Shoutout to my extremely chatty Lyft driver a couple months back for mentioning L.A. rain and then putting up with all my questions about it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s been raining, on and off. It’s been raining for days. The wet season is worse than it’s been in years, the weather people helpfully inform Bill before he turns the television off and goes to write. His latest novel will be published soon, and he’s a chapter into the next one, and he sits at his computer and does nothing. Restless, he stands and goes to the closest window. He’s got the curtains drawn, but he pulls them to the side to look at the street, at the rain running down the asphalt in little rivers.</p><p>When Bill narrows his eyes he can see a tiny figure wandering away, wearing a yellow raincoat, and his breath catches.</p><p><em>Wait up for me, Georgie. I’ll come with you. I’ll come with you, just wait a minute. </em>Bill bites back the words that rise in his throat. He knows he’s seeing ghosts, and he can’t get these brief moments of bitter fantasy confused with reality.</p><p>He has to keep his feet on the ground. He has work to do, and his friends, and the divorce. Audra keeps looking at him like he’s crazy, telling him he needs to get help, but Bill doesn’t need that. He’s not the one who’s having the worst time of it. Eddie’s still getting better, Bev’s got her own, much more contentious divorce, Richie’s still dealing with the deadlights and his career, and then there’s Mike.</p><p>Mike, who says he’ll be by soon, and who called him the other day too early in the morning because he had to hear someone else’s voice and make sure what he remembered was real.</p><p>Bill’s friends are having a hard enough time without him breaking down, and Bill’s always prided himself on not breaking down. </p><p>(He is not often proud of himself.)</p><p>Slowly, Bill closes his eyes. When he opens them, the illusion is gone. </p><p>Bill sees Georgie in the rain, as a rule, and he always has, even when he only half-remembered that Georgie existed, when it was only when he looked at the photos on the walls of his parents’ home that he remembered that there was a little brother in his life once, and he loved him so much. </p><p><em>You were the best big brother in the world,</em> he assured the angry creature with the needle teeth under Neibolt house, and he felt a spark of guilt as he said it even though he knew he wasn’t exactly wrong. <em>It wasn’t your fault. It never…ever…was. </em></p><p>He wasn’t wrong, but he doesn’t feel like he was right either, because even if it wasn’t really Bill’s fault, Georgie’s still gone, and if Bill had been there, Georgie wouldn’t have died. There are some things that can’t be excused with <em>it was a mistake </em>or <em>I was just a kid. </em></p><p>(Bill’s still trying to pinpoint what exactly those things are.)</p><p>Most of the year, it doesn’t rain where Bill lives, but the rainy season always comes at some point, and Bill can’t help but hate it, even though it’s good for the drought, when there’s a drought, and there’s always a drought. </p><p>Bill didn’t move to California to get away from the rain, but it wasn’t a negative. </p><p>He’s never liked the rain, and he’s never quite been able to say why, even though it always features in his books. The rain, the gutters, drowning. It’s inescapable. </p><p>It’s pouring now, just like it was on that day, the rain running from the asphalt and into the gutters in little rivers. Bill’s mind drifts. He’s starting to feel dizzy.</p><p>He gets like this sometimes.</p><p>Before he went back to Derry, he’d always whisper to himself, as the numb disconnect started: <em>time to float. </em>He thought it was funny back then, in his fracturing mind.</p><p>Now it seems so creepy that he doesn’t want to think about it. He clenches his jaw against the words, and tries to focus on the pain of his teeth trying their damndest to shatter each other. He is going to sit down, and he is going to write, and he isn’t going to do this right now because it’s strange and it’s unnecessary and it shouldn’t happen to him anymore.</p><p>(<em>You’ll float too.</em></p><p>He wasn’t wrong.)</p><p>He wanders over to his front door, opens it, and steps into the rain. It’s sharp and cold on his bare skin, like needles, and he gasps without emotion. He can feel his feet on the ground again, the concrete wet and dirty on his skin. He doesn’t know why he’s out here, but he stays, looking around, wondering if Georgie’s hiding somewhere, though he was always too clingy for hide-and-seek.</p><p>A practical thought worms into his head, and he grips it with both hands: <em>I hope Mike won’t make it in today. </em>He’s sure he won’t. It’s raining anyway, and probably dangerous to drive, and Mike’s reasonable enough to know that, probably. <em>Definitely,</em> Bill means, he means <em>definitely</em> because he doesn’t want to call Mike unreasonable.</p><p>Mike’s just having a hard time being alone. Bill can relate, and it’s not like he doesn’t want to see Mike. The late-night calls (<em>it’ll be okay, Mikey, you’re not alone, you’ve got us, you’ve got me. I’m here. Just come h-h-h…come by. I love you</em>) and mid-day texts from random landmarks and laughter and messy FaceTimes with the others, all of it just makes him want to see Mike more and more.</p><p>Now’s just not a good time.</p><p>Outside in the driveway he can still hear the rain pounding on the roof, on all the roofs around him, and he watches the gutters, looking for blood that doesn’t materialize, and he closes his eyes and opens his hands, uncurls them from fists and lets the rain drive into the skin of his palms. Streams of water trickle down what that one fortune-teller he went to for research purposes called his lifeline, and his fingers twitch. The fortune-teller told him, back then, <em>you’ll have a long life, </em>and he gave her a strained smile and reassured himself that she probably said that to everyone.</p><p>Bill is getting soaked. His shirt is stuck to his torso and his sweatpants are getting heavy with water and he hopes, vaguely, that the neighbors don’t see him. Then, for a while, he floats.</p><p>He barely notices the sound of a car pulling up close-by and a door opening and closing. He mostly notices the sound of rain on the car, like on a tin roof. It reverberates in his head.</p><p>He’s alone out here, he tells himself, but then he hears, “Bill?”</p><p>He feels a vague surprise, but not unease. He recognizes the voice, low and wary and soothing, and he starts to smile before the dull beating of the rain against his skin washes him away again. His heart swells uncomfortably, and his head is bursting with so many memories that he can’t seem to make any of them out, and his emotions have entirely given up on being a useful part of him right now and are resting at the back of his mind.</p><p>Bill’s overloaded like an old computer, only the most vital components still online, and even those are shutting down.</p><p>There’s a hand on his shoulder. Paradoxically, Bill shivers at the heat of another person’s skin, even through his shirt. He opens his eyes.</p><p>Mike is standing in front of him with a frown on his face and sympathy in his eyes, and Bill wants to smile or reach out to him or both. He wants to at the very least say hello, but any sounds he tries to force out seize his throat, and it doesn’t take long for him to decide he’s not interested in saying anything anymore. He should feel embarrassed, but he just stares at Mike, at the sharp lines of his face (Bill wonders if he’s lost weight) and the way the rain trickles over his lips.</p><p>For a moment, Bill imagines leaning up to kiss the rain away. The thought is so sudden and bold that it catches him off-guard. He’s supposed to push those thoughts away.</p><p>Right now, he’s not doing a good job of pushing any thoughts away. They just wander through his mind, and he watches them go by before getting distracted by the water on the asphalt, its steady patter drowning out the laughter Bill swears he can hear. Georgie’s laughter, Georgie’s voice, if Bill could just find his little brother, he could be himself again. But there’s no finding him. There’s no one here.</p><p>“What’s going on, Bill?” Mike asks, and Bill remembers: there’s at least one person here. It’s just that at some point, Bill’s gaze drifted over Mike’s shoulder, and he forgot. “Look at me, man,” Mike says. Bill drags his eyes away from everything he’s not going to see and back to Mike. Mike’s hand is on his shoulder, and Bill imagines an anchor.</p><p>“What’s going on?” Mike asks again, and Bill shrugs, helpless.</p><p>
  <em>Nothing. Too much. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m feeling because I don’t think I’m feeling anything but the feeling of not feeling is probably a feeling and I keep thinking about all the things I’m not feeling as if I’m feeling them and now feeling doesn’t sound like a word anymore even though I’m not even talking, so I’m probably just fucking crazy.</em>
</p><p>Or maybe it’s the rain. Bill prefers that idea.</p><p>Bill’s eyes drift from Mike’s face and down his body. Mike got so tall. At some point, he got tall, and Bill missed it. The thought makes a lump rise in his throat, and then he wonders how tall Georgie would’ve been if he’d had the chance to grow, and he thinks a tear runs down his face, but he can’t be sure. The rain washes it all away so fast.</p><p>Mike’s flannel shirt is green and blue and kind of ugly, though it’s sticking to his skin in a way that Bill finds much less ugly. Mike’s not wearing a jacket, and Bill imagines himself, a normal himself, opening the door of his house and smiling at Mike and saying, <em>It’s raining, Mikey. What’re you doing with no coat? </em></p><p>But all his words are soaked through, and Mike asks, “Are you in your pajamas?” </p><p>Bill thinks it’s probably a good idea that he didn’t get up the energy to mention that Mike should be wearing a coat. He’d look like such a hypocrite right now, harping on a coat when he’s not even wearing shoes and this is the closest he’s gotten to taking a shower in days.</p><p>His chest heaves as he barks out a laugh. Mike squeezes his shoulder and takes a tentative step forward.</p><p>Last time Bill was with Mike, he was leaving Derry. They hugged goodbye and promised to stay in touch. They all promised to stay in touch, and this time they did, and that’s good. That’s amazing. Bill knows it’s amazing.</p><p>He also knows that he should’ve changed his clothes two days ago and it’s raining and he’s been absolutely sure that he’s in love with Mike since the third terrible selfie from Nebraska and his little brother’s been dead for thirty years and every bit of knowledge running through his head feels the same, dull and distant.</p><p>Bill feels a pull towards Mike, as he looks up at him, and lets it be.</p><p>When Bill and Mike hugged goodbye last time, Bill was leaving Derry and Mike hugged first. Now Bill throws his arms around him, burying his face in the crook of Mike’s neck. He hugs him with enough force that Mike lets out an <em>oof </em>before hugging back, but he does hug back, tight enough that it hurts, but Bill doesn’t mind.</p><p>The fact that there’s another person holding him, and that the person holding him is Mike, makes Bill realize that he hasn’t been able to breathe, because for the first time in what seems like a long time his body lets him take a breath that fills his lungs.</p><p>Bill imagines a lifeboat.</p><p>(Maybe, more than floating, he’s drowning.)</p><p>“Hey,” Mike says into Bill’s wet hair, a little hesitant. “Maybe we should go inside. It’s, uh…raining.” He trails off a bit at the last word, because <em>no shit, </em>and Bill feels a compulsion to explain.</p><p>“I w-w-was, I was…l-l-l-<em>looking </em>for…ssssomeone,” Bill says, voice muffled by the rain like everything else.</p><p>“Who?” Mike whispers, almost inaudibly, and Bill lets out a shaky laugh into Mike’s shoulder.</p><p>“Who else?” he asks, and Mike never met Georgie, but Bill knows he understands.</p><p>“Oh,” Mike murmurs. “Yeah, you’re…I’m sorry, Bill.” He’s floundering, and he pulls back and breaks the hug, holding Bill almost at arm’s length, big hands squeezing Bill’s shoulders. Mike's eyes are wet, but it could be the rain. It’s all just the rain, really. </p><p>Bill's own eyes feel hot, but any tears that spill over are getting washed away so quickly that it’s not really something he’s thinking about.</p><p>“You’re not gonna find him,” Mike says. The words are blunt, but he’s trying to be gentle, like Bill is when he reassures Mike that <em>yes, It is gone, no, it wasn’t a dream, how could it be, Mike? When’s the last time you even slept? </em>“I’m the best you can do.”</p><p>The words hit Bill in the chest and take his already limited breath away.</p><p><em>I’m the best you can do. </em>He’s not wrong.</p><p>Georgie’s gone. Bill was looking for someone, and Georgie didn’t come, because he couldn’t, he can’t, of course he can’t. Mike did. It’s been so long, but Mike is still here. All of Bill’s friends are, but Mike is here now, and he was exactly the right person to be here now, because Mike gets it.</p><p>(Maybe Mike doesn’t see people in the rain, but Bill knows he sees them in the fire.)</p><p>Not all is lost anymore. Some things, yeah. Some things can’t be changed. But at least Bill knows. At least Bill knows who it is he can’t find, what it is he wants. At least Bill recognizes who it is he wants to be with him. Both of them.</p><p>“I’m the best you can do,” Mike says again, voice choked, and Bill nods.</p><p>“Okay,” he whispers in response. “That’s okay.”</p><p>He takes a step back, and wobbles a bit. He’s waterlogged at this point, he thinks.</p><p>“Woah there,” Mike murmurs, and he maneuvers himself so that his arm is around Bill’s shoulders, and together they come in from the rain.</p><p>The door shuts behind them, and then Bill and Mike are dripping onto Bill’s hardwood floor, Mike’s arm tightening around Bill’s shoulders as Bill just stands there, trying to get used to the present again, to the reality he could only half reside in when he was outside, even in Mike’s arms.</p><p>“Where’s your bathroom?” Mike asks. “We should get cleaned up.”</p><p>Bill nods, and opens his mouth, and shuts it, and opens it again to say, “It’s ov-ver…it’s…”</p><p>“Maybe just show me,” Mike suggests, and Bill wilts a little, but it’s not a bad idea.</p><p>He points toward the nearest bathroom, and Mike manages to get them there, sitting Bill down on the closed toilet and grabbing a hand-towel that he uses to wipe off his own face. Mike unbuttons his shirt and shrugs it off. His undershirt is only slightly less wet, and for a moment Bill feels a spark of hope that he might take it off, but instead Mike grabs another towel and rubs the water away from Bill’s face. Bill takes deep breaths, and lets him.</p><p>Once he’s managed to mop away most of the rain, Mike scrubs the towel over Bill’s head to dry his hair. He does it with more force than Bill expected, and Bill sputters a bit with distant indignation,</p><p>Mike laughs, letting the towel fall to the tiled floor, and Bill manages a smile. He takes another deep breath, almost relieved that he still can. Mike kneels in front of him and places a hand behind Bill’s neck, looks into his eyes. They stay together in silence for a moment before Mike says, “You smell like rain.”</p><p>“Yeah?” Bill answers, lips less numb than before. “That’s called, uh…” The word escapes him, and in reality he probably smells like spray-on deodorant and too long without a shower anyway.</p><p>“Petrichor,” Mike offers, and Bill nods. His head feels like it’s going to pop off and float away (like a balloon), and he feels his lips quirk upwards again in a twitchy smile.</p><p>“That’s it,” he says. “P-p-p…petrichor.” He deflates. “I hate this.”</p><p>Mike, still kneeling in front of him (on one knee, when Bill was in college he was in this class on Medieval literature and for some reason they still watched movies for it and there was all this going down on one knee and he doesn’t think he thought it was romantic at the time but <em>now</em>), rubs his thumb over the back of Bill’s neck.</p><p>“Come back, Bill,” he says, but first Bill closes his eyes again.</p><p>He sees blissful, far-reaching darkness, and then the sunrise comes, and there is a crystal clear river, far from the sewers, and on the bank of the river there are bones, and he knows they’re Georgie’s bones, though the body that held them is long gone. The gently rushing water has washed the blood and the decomposition away. The image is vivid, and for some reason, it comforts him. He’s not sure that his mind’s ever shown him something so peaceful, something that feels like--</p><p>Like a goodbye.</p><p>Bill opens his eyes.</p><p>Mike smiles.</p><p>There are circles under his eyes and Bill knows half his blood’s probably just coffee at this point, but the edge to his voice hasn’t been prominent and he seems okay, for now. Bill’s glad for that. Mike’s okay sometimes, and Bill sometimes isn’t, and that doesn’t feel like a failure right at this moment.</p><p>(His friends surround him as he sobs into a yellow raincoat, still not ready to let go.</p><p>Georgie steps into the pouring rain, and waves goodbye.)</p><p>“You smell like rain too,” Bill says, and Mike snorts.</p><p>“What’d you expect?”</p><p>“I l-like the smell on you,” Bill says, his brain-to-mouth filter shot, and Mike’s smile widens and his eyes spark with something that Bill thinks might be hope.</p><p>Bill can feel the hope too. He’s not sure where it’s from, but he likes it. Bill is coming back to himself, and for once he feels ready for it. Mike’s here, he notes, like he’s noted a million times today, but now the thought is free of anything but affection. He feels—</p><p>He feels like he’s at home, and Mike is here with him, and it’s raining outside, but that’s fine. There’s nothing that Bill has to do out there in the rain. No one he has to look for. Everything he needs right now at this moment is in front of him, and Bill is almost giddy with relief. This is the best he’s ever felt, coming back to earth from wherever he goes when his brain decides to disconnect from his body, because he’s not alone. He doesn’t have to be alone.</p><p>He leans forward. Mike leans up. Bill knows that they’ve both wanted to do this for a long time, and it feels right to do it now.</p><p>“You’re back,” Mike breathes out. The smile on his face is relieved and warm and he looks as happy to see Bill as Bill is to see Mike, because Bill <em>is </em>happy to see Mike, even though he’s pretty sure he hasn’t done a good job of showing it.</p><p>To make up for that, he kisses Mike, soft and dry and warm, and when Mike kisses back, Bill’s sure that he understands.</p><p>Mike understands that Bill’s happy they’re both here.</p>
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